PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S EDUCATION PACKAGE

...Four of these laboratories are already under way at Harvard, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, and Oregon universities...

...That works out to $200 a pupil...

...That is its emphasis on the need for innovation, of building change into the schools...

...Under the formula, for instance, North Carolina would receive $48 million, and Wisconsin $14 million, although both include about the same number of school children...

...This is only a partial list...

...A recurring theme in Keppel's speeches is that the lag between discovery and application in medicine is about two years while in education it may be fifty...

...We are going to have to develop new and better ways to educate our children...

...This is a glimpse of what the President envisions...

...He would also meet them when he went to a special educational service center to study Russian in a language laboratory and to use teaching machines...

...Shared time programs have been carried out in a limited way for many years in more than 200 school districts in thirty-five states...

...for the children of those states...

...There would be after-school tutors and a quiet place to study...

...The U.S...

...And only half of the state's eighth graders ever go on to complete high school...

...South Carolina spends an average of $240 a year on each child...

...By focusing his program on aid to low income families, Mr...

...Local school boards would submit plans to the state showing how they were planning to use the Federal funds to improve the schools in the slums or in other poor areas...

...Children in the slums, under the President's program, would start at age three in public nursery schools where efforts would be made to put them on an equal footing with those who enter first grade from highly-motivated middle class homes...

...More than 400,000 children attended school on part-time sessions...

...The major spending is earmarked for schools in urban and rural slums...

...Three times as many mentally-retarded children need special classes as are in them today...

...Clearly, when six out of ten tenth graders in the slums do not go on to finish high school, what is needed, apart from better incomes for the poor, are major changes in the way the schools function—and that is the spirit but not the letter of the bill...

...The differences in the quality of education are firmly linked to the gap in school spending...

...Social workers would know about the problems he faced at home and make this information known to school personnel...

...Parochial students would benefit more directly from the $100 million proposed for textbooks and instructional materials, such as slides, records, charts, tapes, films, and library books...

...In Washington's downtown schools, the average family earns less than $5,000, and less than $500 is spent on each school child...

...One of their principal aims would be to shorten the time lag between research findings and their application in the classroom...

...Whether his measures would achieve all this is another matter...

...Commenting on the Federal program, Gardner said: "The President understands that the old ways of doing things will not solve our problems...

...The problem will have to be solved at the local level and that's just where it belongs," said one Administration spokesman...

...Keppel hopes that school districts will set up model school systems but the legislation, as originally drafted, does not require them to do so, and the bill is not likely to be strengthened as it moves through Congress...

...While the President wants to provide the educational leverage to lift children out of poverty, he also seeks funds to raise the quality of all schools...

...But this year the bill appears to have a clear track...

...The low income criteria is designed to channel more of the Federal funds to states with a higher incidence of poor people...

...All public and parochial schools would be eligible for this aid, whether or not they served low income families...

...The quality of its schooling is reflected by two salient facts: Only forty-eight per cent of those who take the relatively simple Selective Service test in South Carolina pass it...

...They would have better textbooks and libraries...

...The President's first step in Federal aid to education is a modest one...

...Because they would be aided on the basis of all poor children in the local school system, the Administration's program directs the boards to provide assistance "for the benefit of all children within the area served, including those who participate in shared services or special education projects...

...The degree of parochial school participation will vary greatly, according to state laws, individual parish needs and attitudes, and the good will of local school officials...

...The legislation proposed is for three years, but Mr...

...Public school boards would select the books and other materials, and private school students would be eligible for a proportionate share...

...Studies of Harlem children reveal that their schooling is so shoddy they fall progressively further behind...

...They would be jointly planned and administered by public and private educators, though all funding would be through public agencies...

...One-fifth of the nation's teachers do not meet certification standards...

...But if his program is to be effective, $5 billion a year would be far from wasteful...

...California puts $515 into the education of each child, and eighty-five per cent of its youngsters pass the Selective Service exam...

...One important thrust of his program has been little noticed...

...They might serve as educational television centers where master teachers would tape courses for telecasting to all schools...

...The list of national shortcomings in education is long...

...This has not been sufficiently emphasized...

...They could provide special services such as psychological counseling, diagnosis of reading problems, and special remedial and enrichment courses...

...One billion dollars would be allotted to the states on the basis of the number of children living in families earning less than $2,000 a year...

...While the bill certainly pushes in this direction, especially in its provisions for the centers and regional laboratories, it may not be enough...

...Johnson's proposals were submitted to the Justice Department for an opinion concerning their constitutionality and came back with a favorable report...

...During his first few school years his classes might be ungraded and employ team teaching...

...Commissioner of Education Francis Keppel, and John W. Gardner, president of the Carnegie Foundation and chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Education, put great emphasis on the need for research and innovation to improve education...

...If the entire $1.5 billion in aid which the President has proposed were spent in just South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, it would not be enough to provide really first-rate schooling...

...education laboratories...

...Proposed as a vehicle for rapid change and institutional reform of the schools, the model is a cluster of schools detached from the regular system as an experimental system-within-a-system...

...For higher education, the bill also proposes $260 million in aid for college scholarships and guaranteed student loans at reduced interest, and to upgrade college libraries and improve the quality of underdeveloped colleges...

...The Harvard experts readily admitted that the school cost figures of wealthy suburbs were politically unrealistic as a national goal but stressed that this indicated how "enormous . . . the gap is between our least favored public school systems and our most favored systems...

...Two of the principal architects of the bill, U.S...

...An Administration source explained that the general principle is simply this: If a child has a right to full-time attendance in a public school, he has a right to attend part-time or to receive some services...

...First, a closer look at the $1.5 billion bill and its provisions...

...Each would serve a group of schools...

...School bills have been regularly scuttled in every session of Congress since World War II by various coalitions of Southern segregationists, fiscal conservatives, and Catholic leaders...

...Under the President's plan, children attending the three parochial schools in the Cardozo area would be encouraged to participate in many of these programs and to plug into the public school television circuit...

...The centers—which might be in new buildings, rented quarters, or a wing of a public school —would be pilot plants for getting new ideas, new methods, and improved facilities into the school system...

...Johnson has packed drama into the school aid issue, and he has put opponents of the bill in the uncomfortable position of being against the poor...

...More than 200,000 students in the top third of their high school graduating class, primarily because of lack of funds, fail to go on to college...

...The Harlem child is one year behind average New York City pupil achievement in the first grade, two years behind by the sixth grade, and two-and-a-half years behind by the eighth...

...The model school plan, which has been adopted in Washington, D. C, and several other cities, was put forth by a Presidential panel in a report, "Innovation and Experimentation in Education...

...Referring to the new law, Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, chairman of the House Labor and Education Committee and the author of countless desegregation riders to past school bills, said modestly, "The Powell amendment is now the law of the land...

...For each such poor child, the state would receive a sum equal to half the per-pupil expenditure in that state...

...They went on to warn: "Tinkering with a few programs at the level of $100 or $200 a student, in the name of making up for the cultural deprivation, would not only be unfair to everyone involved but a serious detriment to the entire nation in facing realistically what the problems of poverty and the culturally deprived actually are...

...President Johnson has a handsome majority on Capitol Hill, and Congressional leaders predict that they easily have the votes this year to override the conservatives...

...A team of Harvard University consultants who recently studied Washington, D.C.'s inner city schools, where Negro children predominate, concluded that at least $11,000 per child would have to be spent to close the gap between their educational opportunity and the kind that is available in affluent suburbs...

...A score of experimental programs are planned or under way, ranging from pre-school centers to team-teaching and closed-circuit television...

...Johnson proposes to put $1 billion into their schools...

...His school would have a well-stocked library and he would be given paperback books to take home...

...The aid to parochial grade and high schools that would be provided through the centers and through other features of the President's plan has led some to raise the image of Cardinal Spellman's camel...

...Some school systems will undoubtedly spend their funds for more of the old, wornout methods and will achieve some of the old dismal results...

...This provison would bring parochial school children into the picture for some of the benefits of the proposed Federal aid program...

...Another $100 million is earmarked for supplementary educational service centers, for both rich and poor areas...

...Nearly nine out of every ten present eighth graders will finish high school in California...

...Office of Education reports that 124,300 new classrooms were needed last year-—64,900 to replace substandard facilities and 59,-400 to relieve overcrowding...

...For example, if private and parochial school pupils accounted for a third of total school enrollment in an area, they would qualify for a third of the texts and instructional materials...

...In rural areas, the centers might be mobile, bringing reading specialists or laboratories to schools in remote areas...

...Perhaps the most revolutionary and least understood of the President's proposals, these centers would differ greatly from area to area...

...In Washington, eighteen inner-city primary schools feeding into Cardozo High School have been designated a model system under a special assistant superintendent...

...According to the 1960 census, which will be used as the statistical base for the allotment of Federal funds under the Administration bill, there are five million children in families earning less than $2,000...

...The bill provides $45 million for such laboratories, where teachers would be trained and research conducted with the goal of improving instruction techniques...

...Parochial school students might come into Johnny's school in the afternoon for courses in music or the new mathematics...

...The centers might house some of the fancy new educational hardware such as teaching machines and language laboratories...

...Anti-segregation amendments that have caused Southern Congressmen to spurn aid to education measures have been made unnecessary by the Civil Rights Act of 1964...

...His nose will be in the Federal school aid tent, critics say...

...Some of the new techniques that would benefit public and private school children attending the centers would be developed in a nationwide network of university-based regional education laboratories...

...The President has also neutralized, if not actually won, the backing of important groups on both sides of the church-state issue with his proposals to aid parochial students rather than their schools...

...Does the President propose enough aid to break this sordid cycle...

...In the summer, there would be educational camps where he would paint, read, sing, and swim...

...The panel was headed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Jerrold Zach-arias, who has sparked much of the curriculum reform in science teaching...

...Johnny—from a low income family— would attend an elementary school with smaller classes...

...All the schools in Johnny's city would have more free textbooks and might benefit from new techniques that would be developed in regional GERALD GRANT is a staff writer for The Washington Post whose specialty is the field of education...

...In some suburban school districts on Long Island, they pointed out, children come from homes where the average income is $15,000 a year and average per pupil expenditures range between $1,500 and $1,800 annually...

...His mother would go to school on Saturday morning to learn what Johnny had been doing during the week and how to help him at home...

...Eventually, test cases will be brought, and the courts may decide that the pattern of aid that has been worked out in one community is constitutional, but the program in another is not...

...But at minimum, the legislation does force school officials to give top priority to the education of children now attending the grimy, decaying schools in the slums...

...Johnson has not revealed what amounts he intends to ask for in the second and third years...

...While local boards would have wide latitude in spending, formation of so-called model school districts would be encouraged...